


Time-Warped

by glitterandrocketfuel



Category: Fall Out Boy
Genre: Genderswap, Girl!Pete, M/M, Near Future, Post-Pandemic, Time Travel, Time Travelling Lesbians, Warped Tour, Warped Tour 2005, girl!patrick, haunted port-a-potty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-29
Updated: 2020-09-29
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:29:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26705257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glitterandrocketfuel/pseuds/glitterandrocketfuel
Summary: Nostalgia's got everybody feeling some type of way at the post-pandemic Warped reunion Tour and the last port-a-potty in the back row is possibly a TARDIS in disguise, but it's definitely no bigger on the inside than it is on the outside, and 2005 looks way different from this end of time.This is why Patrick swore they'd never be a nostalgia band. Dear future self, the memories didn't come back to thank you.
Relationships: Patrick Stump/Pete Wentz
Comments: 18
Kudos: 29
Collections: Warped 2020





	Time-Warped

**Author's Note:**

  * For [heartsliesnpeterick](https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartsliesnpeterick/gifts).



> The prompt was "band jealousy" but as usual, my brain works differently. Instead of using a perfectly good idea for the Summer of Like, I went with a more esoteric idea--that jealousy is a form of regret and you have no one to blame but your own past self.

Some countries had handled the pandemic much better than others _(ahem!)_ , looking after their citizens' welfare with a much more aggressive approach. Those left behind, at least in their little corner of the music industry, had Pete Wentz.

"Think about it, guys. Everybody's lost, like, two years of their lives over this thing, and the people we work with, they've lost two years of their livelihoods. What if maybe we could give some of that back?"

"A big summer festival full of people shoulder to shoulder, breathing each other's air is not gonna go over like it did before breathing each other's air meant plague," Joe said over the Skype call they were all sharing.

"It wasn't _Plague_ ," Andy corrected.

"It'd be an outdoor festival," Pete said. "I've been talking to Kevin and Lisa from Warped Tour." He rubbed the spot between his eyebrows. "They reached out, wanting to know if they could help with the Fall Out Boy Fund--Lisa's got a storage unit full of old paraphernalia and leftover unclaimed merch from dozens of bands and wanted to know if those band members would give a charity auction a boost."

"I thought you had all our old merch," Patrick muttered. "Isn't that why you can only fit _one_ car in your _four-car_ garage?"

Pete went from rubbing his frown lines to flipping the bird. "Not until the auction's over. I'm buying back all our old stuff. Anyway, that got me thinking so I called them back and said, 'what about more than an auction--what about another Warped Tour?'"

"Warped Tour lost money or barely broke even most of its years without the looming threat of a relapse into a pandemic," Joe pointed out.

"You think I don't know that?" Pete lifted both eyebrows, ruining all the hard work he'd done smoothing out his frown lines. "That's why I suggested going with the bands that made Warped's best profit years. Kind of a reunion tour--"

"We are _not_ a nostalgia band," Patrick said tightly.

"A reunion tour for the bands that went in different directions," Pete said over him, "And a new tour for the ones still kicking around." Pete lifted his chin. "Fully staffed in everything from backstage to back row. Think of the jobs it'll create."

"But Joe's not wrong. People are going to be skittish about large gatherings. Something like this--"

"Isn't going to be the same as the original Warped Tour. Here's how we do it--a dozen locations around the country and shows for four or five days at each location. It's outdoor, so no enclosed spaces, and ticket sales are cut off at post-pandemic limits. Two main stages and one feature stage, a full-day schedule on rotation by lottery. Locals hired at each venue and local bands invited to the feature stage. And you guys haven't even heard the best part." Pete's face split into a pixelated grin.

"Oh God." Joe dragged a hand down his bearded face.

"We're calling it the _Time_ -Warped Tour."

"I hate you, Wentz." Out of spite, Joe changed his background to an exploding volcano and put devil horns and flaming eyes on himself.

Pete cackled and changed himself to Iron Man. The call degenerated and Andy's Fisher-Price internet gave up the ghost, leaving him a pixelated mess frozen in time.

Patrick kept silent in his little quadrant of the Skype meeting. His attitude towards touring was well-known to be "tolerated" as opposed to Pete's "mandatory to survival" and Joe's "spring break for grown-ups" or Andy's natively nomadic, citizen-of-the-world existence. But while the extended period at home gave him presence at critical milestones in his kids' lives, the enforced confinement strained the bonds of a relationship that worked best with autonomy and a larger territorial threshold than a suburban house in a quiet, modest neighborhood.

After Joe and Andy dropped the call, Pete hung around. "Patrick?"

"I'm in," Patrick said. "I am _so_ in."

**

Patrick was the first to arrive at the parking lot where their buses would load, waving off the Uber driver in the predawn gloom, two duffels, a rolling carry-on, a laptop case, and a soft-sided guitar case piled at his feet. He sat down on the roller and watched the sunrise until the buses themselves arrived and the crew started showing up, dropped off by spouses and Lyfts and cabs and friends. People were still wary about bro-hugs and more than one mask still dangled off lanyards and bead necklaces and little bottles of hand-sanitizer were clipped to backpack zippers and even jacket pulls.

_All the little ways we've changed_ , Patrick thought.

Then a tech pushed a luggage cart aside and another assistant with a Dr. Seuss hat moved in the opposite direction and two more people parted like the Red Sea and a familiar, braying laugh floated across the suddenly empty space. The sense of waiting, of expectation, of biding time and holding his breath evaporated, and a weight he didn't know he was carrying vanished in the blinding light of Pete's toothy smile. "There he is."

Both of them were weighed down with straps and bags and Pete's perennial Starbucks cup, so the hug was out of the question, but the shoulder bump was all that was necessary. Patrick breathed in the familiar blend of hair product, dryer sheet, coffee, and Pete-sweat in a mix that would steadily lean more and more towards the latter end of things as the tour wore on and felt like he'd taken his first full breath in two years.

He followed Pete onto the bus and the other familiar smell of bus diesel, industrial cleaner, and faint whiffs of that caustic blue stuff they put in the toilet tank hit him. Cramped, mobile-home walls closed him in but his chest expanded in a way it hadn't in spacious four-bedroom suburbia. He tried very hard not to think of what it meant that even without wearing a mask for the past few months as the world slowly righted itself that it was only now that he felt uncovered and seen.

**

After being at home for so long, touring felt new all over again. The extended home stay had filled Patrick's days with all those little side-hustles he'd usually entertain between tours or studio time. For the first time in probably seven years, he had no voice work on deck, no feature tracks to lay down for other artists, and nothing on his production schedule.

Yes, there would be work in the future, and the new album wasn't yet gelled beyond a handful of loops and samples, single-verse song seeds, and two demos. Patrick knew better than to force it. Pete was sending him lyrics, Joe had put together an "auditory moodboard" of mostly his favorite distortion pedals and riffs, and Andy would beat skins on whatever you told him to.

What that left them with was a lot of free time on their hands. Normally, that would be movie marathons or catching up on entire seasons of TV shows, but the length of the lockdown ensured that the entire world had already caught up with just about everything on a screen. So the nightly catering cook-outs turned into a social hour that even the anti-social engaged in since the one thing everybody had missed was everybody else.

Pete's mojo hadn't failed him. Almost every single act they targeted gave them enthusiastic support. Some of them would be hopping on for one or two cities, others, the whole tour. Even Hoppus was on board playing a handful of days with Blink again.

All the current and former members of Panic! wanted in, so Pete did some creative shuffling and world-class negotiation and made sure their buses were kept apart and their schedules remained opposite. Patrick took unofficial charge of running social interference between Brendon and Ryan.

"Shouldn't we treat them like grown-ass men?" Pete asked him.

Patrick scowled. "We are talking about the same people, are we not? Ryan Ross? Brendon Urie?"

"Fair point."

So the Time-Warped Tour rolled out. Sometimes, when Patrick exited the bus into an open field next to a parking lot on a misty morning at a ridiculously early hour, bleary-eyed and confused, he really thought he'd stepped back into 2005. Merch tents went up with familiar logos and the shadowy silhouettes of stage scaffolds and that almost-burnt fried-food smell that seemed to hang over festival grounds whether anything was cooking or not. He and Joe sometimes watched the younger bands as they held meet and greets at the merch tent, some doing their own hand-selling of CDs, t-shirts, face masks, hats, and other merch.

Sometimes he had to look down at his body to make sure he wasn't seeing flared-leg jeans and battered Converse. The sides of his face, just in front of his ears, itched with the ghosts of phantom sideburns. Patrick instantly felt at home at quiet moments around the portable fire-pits and surprisingly few irritations that came from living in close quarters. Yet through it all, even in the still heat of mid-day watching a local band play a set, he never took a shallow breath. _I've missed this so much. I'll never take it for granted again._

Somebody or their spouse was really into that kind of scrapbooking that middle-aged moms seemed to be obsessed with. Half a dozen thick books full of little bits of cut-up paper surrounding candid photos of the original early-aughts Warped Tours interspersed with news articles cut out of _Rolling Stone_ or _Alt-Press_ or _Kerrang!_ were making the rounds of the social hour.

Fifteen years' worth of perspective and distance was just about enough that Patrick could read the articles without flinching or feeling that brain-on-fire sensation that heralded a sleepless night of self-doubt and second-guessing every creative choice he'd ever made.

He flipped a thickly-glued page and found a picture of himself and Pete in mid-performance, Pete's face mashed up against his neck. Accompanying the pic was a pull-quote from an article he couldn't place, but the quote he remembered. "Pete Wentz's longest stable relationship has been with Patrick Stump."

Patrick was 98% certain the article spoke of the context of his creative relationship with Pete because he steered hard away from anything remotely connected to the irritating "shipping" nonsense that bothered him so much in the past. But whoever had put together the collage hadn't been similarly constrained because there were other pull-quotes glued to the page like Pete's insistence that Patrick was made of first kisses and 70-degree weather and never did gross things.

Which made Patrick chuckle because he remembered the show when the picture was taken or one just like it. Both of them reeked of unwashed ass and stale beer and week-old B.O. They were nothing but "gross things" at that point, but the scrapbook didn't seem to think so. More of Pete's outrageous quotes dotted the page, along with a severely unflattering shot of himself, Joe, and Pete from an early interview with a caption that said "[Joe]: You two should get married. [Patrick]: We are."

It'd been an obvious joke to him at the time, otherwise he never would have said it (and before they all discovered that fans were writing stories about them). _Pete really is my longest and most stable relationship_.

Taylor from Paramore came up. "Mind if I join you?"

"Sure." Patrick made room and the two of them were soon laughing at all of their terrible fashion choices (and sometimes the lack of hygiene behind them). "So where's Hayley these days? I've only seen her once, the first night."

"Hayley's turtling up on her bus. I guess some parts of the tour are bringing back memories. We're giving her space." Taylor's expression betrayed his worry. "She saves all her energy for the stage, though. I haven't seen her bounce around like that since the last time she had the fire hair. It's bringing back memories."

_I thought she went blonde_ , Patrick thought, then shrugged. Most of the original early-aughts bands were playing with some form of nostalgia, and Hayley wasn't known for her commitment to a single hair color anyway.

Taylor grinned. "What about _your_ other half?"

"The guyliner is definitely staying in the past, where it belongs. And so are the sideburns, before you ask."

It wasn't until one of the long stretches of companionable silence with Pete as the bus caravan rolled down the highway after the first week that Patrick replayed the conversation and realized when Taylor said "other half," Patrick didn't think of anybody but Pete.

**

The whole concept of their "stable relationship" gnawed at Patrick, especially on evenings where he brought Pete a plate from the dessert table when he was engrossed in a conversation, or Pete handed him hot green tea in the morning before he knew to ask for it and with the exact amount of honey. Sitting at the table in their bus lounge area, his face buried in the steam inhaler, with Pete's side pressed along his back, propping him up like a bony lumbar pillow. A bony, _warm_ lumbar pillow.

The somewhat settled nature of the tour attempted to offer at least one hotel night for everybody in every location. This early on, people were still generous--offering to double up, or volunteering to camp in the buses for "credit" for double nights later on. Patrick and Pete chose the latter option without having to discuss it. They both knew Patrick's voice would need babying at the latter end of the tour, and they'd be less prone to squabble with each other with more space. Right now, they were still enjoying the camp-out atmosphere.

The backstage area in this location was the latter half of a field outside an outdoor amphitheater that had been used for camp-out style festivals before. The buses parked in neat rows along wide "avenues" with medical tents at either end, catering right in the center, and banks of port-a-potties along the outer edges. After the night's performances had wrapped up and catering shut down for the night, Pete had gone over to "Kiddie-land" to help one of the younger bands he was informally scouting design some last-minute merch (Patrick didn't have the heart to tell the kids to do some research before they went to Pete for merch design, but that would be a "learning experience" for them).

Patrick and Joe were hanging out outside Brendon's bus (read: babysitting while some of the former members of Panic! awkwardly shuffled their feet around each other and tried to keep the conversation light as they negotiated who was allowed to be on stage with whom and for what songs). "Spencer," Jon was saying while Brendon was inside in the kitchenette popping corn, "I'd wait until later in the tour before making any decisions on that song." He jerked his head towards the bus.

"He seems like he'd be open to something--maybe not during Panic's set but--"

Jon shook his head. "Ryan--he was fine for a few nights but yesterday he disappeared for a while and came back looking like he'd seen a ghost. Today's set, he practically ran for the stage and wouldn't leave people alone afterward. He was actually helping roadies on the next two sets. One of 'em begged me to take him out and get him drunk or something. It was…weird."

"It's Ryan Ross," Joe pointed out. Patrick agreed. Shortly after, he and Joe were heading back to the Fall Out Boy home base. "Man," Joe said. "It really takes some planning to get the family back together after mom and dad split up."

Patrick huffed a laugh as his sneakers sussed over the grass. "Actual marriages have parted more amicably than those two."

"They'd still be together if they were actually married." Joe turned to him, his eyes wide and his lashes fluttering. "Mommy? Promise me you and daddy won't ever split up?"

Patrick laughed outright this time. "Hey, I thought we agreed that Pete's the mommy?"

"Last time I asked, 'Who's your daddy?' Pete answered first. He gets to be the daddy." Joe slowed down and veered off. "I'm going to catch up with Andy before he runs away from home and joins a circus metal band."

Patrick smirked. "Don't make me come after you, too." He split off from Joe and headed to the outer bank of port-a-potties. The night seemed darker away from the main lines of portable lot lights and an edge of scrubby trees could be close enough for wild animals. Like coyotes. Or werewolves. And maybe he should stop pretending to not-watch Pete's episodes of _Supernatural_ playing in the background.

_It's good that there's nobody around. Privacy's at a premium, I'm going to enjoy it while I can_.

He no more finished the thought when the door on the last cubicle popped open and Bill Beckett of all people stumbled out.

"Don' go inna last one. 'M pretty sure it's haunted." Bill stumbled past Patrick, patting his shoulder.

Patrick cocked his head, a frown lowering his brows. "Bilvy? You okay, man?"

Beckett blinked down at him and ran a shaky hand through his hair. The gray at his temples stood out in the cool LED light from the parking lot lights washing everything out. He laughed, although it sounded more tremulous than humorous.

"Hey, listen--I know it's been a while since you lived the touring life--if you need an antacid or something, come to mine and Pete's bus. We've got a whole pharmacy between us." Patrick made to reach for the taller man.

Beckett swayed backward. "I'm good I think--I just need to lie down. On a real bed. With my own pillow."

"I hear you, man. But like, thanks again for doing this. You guys, Cobra, My Chem--you disrupted your lives for this and it means a lot to the whole industry."

Bill's slightly seasick expression cleared. "No way, man. It's an honor. What you guys are doing--it's really gonna save rock and roll."

Patrick rubbed the back of his neck. "I don't know about that. We just knew we needed to do something. Too many people lost their livelihoods with the whole lockdown thing."

"Listen," Bill said. "You really are saving rock and roll. We can't all be rock-star successful, but we could do okay, and--"

"Bill--" Patrick reached out to grip the other man's arm. "You know it's not about the fame--"

Beckett held up a hand. "Yeah--yeah, I do, Patrick." He laughed wryly and though he was no longer swaying, his voice still shook a little. "I really, really do." He glanced away, towards the bank of port-a-potties he'd just come from. "For the first time ever, I really do. It's about the music. No matter how much else we lose or whatever--whoever--else comes along, we have the music."

"Yeah," Patrick said carefully. "It's about the music, not the misery." Beckett looked like he was about to cry and Patrick was thinking of reaching for his phone to call one of the many aides and gofers they were paying a living wage to basically run errands for the entire tour. But Bill just patted his shoulder again.

"This is really gonna be something else, Patrick. Think I'm gonna Face-time my kid now."

Patrick relaxed and watched him go until he felt confident enough that Bill was walking straight enough to make it back to his bus, then shook his head. Beckett still looked a little like he'd seen a ghost and Patrick remembered Jon's comment from earlier.

_Maybe we're all just seeing ghosts of the kids we used to be. This is why I don't want to be a nostalgia band_.

**

"I barely lasted eight months," Patrick said.

Pete was curled up on the couch, his head against Patrick's hip. "Eight months of what?"

"Lockdown. I broke quarantine twice to hand-deliver film scores by meeting up with the guy in a park'n'ride lot like a damn drug dealer. I passed him a memory stick through the window." Eight months of lockdown in a spacious house with a backyard and his family and he was the first into the parking lot to leave for tour. "You'd think I'd be used to living in limited spaces," Patrick said. "What with how we make our money and all."

"Yeah but kids aren't. Mine aren't, yours aren't. You'd have been fine-- _we'd_ have been fine--lasted longer without a pandemic."

"I still had work and stuff to do at home with the kids to keep them distracted." _And...pretend like there wasn't something unspoken hanging in the air_. "There's only so far you can go in a three-bedroom in the 'burbs and--" He clamped his mouth shut. He didn't want to go into details with Pete. He couldn't do anything about it anyway and neither could Patrick.

"It wasn't far enough." Pete finished the thought. His hand was tucked under his head and his knuckles pressed into Patrick's thigh. "I did loops on the 405 when there were barely any other cars on there," he said after a minute. "It was magical during the night, but one day I made up an excuse and snuck out of the house and did it at lunchtime because I just didn't wanna deal with…everything while everybody was watching. In the middle of the day, it was fucking like the _Walking Dead_. I felt like I was the guy on the horse, riding down the middle of the highway into a burnt-out wasteland full of hungry dead people." Pete turned his face into Patrick's lap.

"Driving in LA with no traffic had to be the most surreal experience I've ever had." Patrick kept his voice steady but his hands went into Pete's hair. He untangled the tie holding the bun in place and let Pete's mane spill over his legs. Pete must have felt so alone in those drives, and he knew what feeling alone did to Pete. "I didn't thank you enough for getting the Cisco gig. I needed--" He couldn't finish the sentence.

"You needed your band," Pete said into his shirt.

They fell into companionable silence as Patrick mused. The low points in his life-- _she cheated and I found out through the press, we liked you better fat, no I don't want to talk_ \--he needed his band.

He must have drifted off at some point because he came awake to Pete head-butting him in the crotch. "Oof my nuts!"

"Mmf! Oh, shit--sorry!" Pete pushed himself up. His hair fell in a snarled curtain around his face. "Need me to kiss 'em better?" He made kissy-face and Patrick shoved him off the couch.

"Come on, let's hit the bricks."

He'd been bunked down for about half an hour when Pete tapped on the bulkhead. Patrick pulled open the curtain to find Pete in basketball shorts and a guilty expression. "Hey. I know it's been a while and--" Pete scrubbed a hand down his face. "I shouldn't have talked about the _Walking Dead_."

It _had_ been awhile. There had been a controlled supply of Ambien, and when there wasn't Ambien, there was a rotation of kids on summer vacation adventures with Dad to all pile in the big bedroom in the back, significant others to spend a few nights with, and just straight-up exhaustion. But now the kids were catching up on schoolwork and the significant others had to be there for the kids. All they had was each other.

Pete wouldn't look at him and even in the low emergency lights, Patrick could see the blush creep up his face. He sat up. "Back bedroom," he said. They'd been using it partly for storage and partly for a mini-studio where Pete took remote and phone interviews, or recorded podcasts and zoom hangouts (which hadn't gone away much to Patrick's irritation. Seemed like once everybody got used to doing video chats, they'd stuck around and now he had to clean his study and think about what he put on the bookshelf behind him because there would be _Judging_ ). Patrick had been feeling the beginnings of the urge to lay tracks, too.

Now he watched Pete hunch into himself and shuffle towards the back bedroom like a man condemned.

"I'm sorry," Pete mumbled as Patrick shoved soft cases to one side and more carefully pushed the tangled cords of a laptop and mic setup to the far edge of the tiny shelf.

Patrick took his best friend's hands. "In you go."

Pete crawled in and curled up on himself like a tattooed potato-bug. Patrick slithered in after him and wrapped an arm around Pete and yanked the other man up against his chest. "Shut up. You have nothing to be sorry about."

"You're being very chill about this, dude. I feel like I lost twenty years of progress on how not to be a dick to my favorite people."

"We'll see who's the dick," Patrick mumbled. "I kick more these days."

"I snore louder."

"Good. It means you're sleeping. Now shut up and snore." Patrick's body curved around Pete's like it remembered without him having to think about it. His muscles relaxed and Pete's back lost some of its tension in response. Some uncomfortable part of him whispered, _'Finally,'_ but he was already drifting back into sleep.

It turned out that he was the dick after all. Because of his dick. He woke up with a raging boner and his hand curved loosely around Pete's half-hard cock through his basketball shorts. Pete was snoring softly and making tiny movements into Patrick's hand.

Hot shame and cold dread arced through him and it was all he could do not to flail himself out of bed in a tornado of arms and legs. Burning all over, Patrick edged out carefully and fled the bus.

**

Patrick was avoiding his bus and his feelings about spooning Pete and ended up loitering near the back bank of port-a-johns because they were on the route that would take him the long way around to catering and this week they had really good hash browns on the breakfast menu. It was ridiculously early for Patrick (and moderately early for the rest of the world) and mist still hung in the air.

The edge of the camping space always felt a little weird and exposed, even though there was temporary fencing put up around the perimeter that made it feel a bit like a prison, too. _Our own little world, but are we safe in here, or are we trapped in here?_ Beyond the fence, there was more field and a line of trees, and he couldn't help but think of Pete's zombies out there.

He was losing himself in the squirrel-brained thoughts--was that shadow a person out there or just a shrub? He heard a groan too close and a spike of nerves flashed cold sweat through him. _Oh God, I thought we were done with all the weird apocalypse shit in 2020!_ But a familiar-sounding slam followed the groan and he realized it was a creaky spring to one of the port-a-potty doors. _Not_ a zombie invasion.

Unless the zombies were led by a dazed and sleepy-looking Hayley Williams, coming out of the last stall. She didn't see him until she nearly collided with him. "Oh! Pats--Patrick! Hey, uh, what's--what's up?"

Patrick caught her elbow to steady her and when he dropped his hand, she swayed on her feet. "Hayley are you okay?"

"What?" She looked up. Her blonde hair was falling out of the messy bun and when she tilted her head, the tie gave up the ghost altogether.

Patrick bent down to pick it up and hand it to her. When he straightened, the clip held out, she was biting her lip. "Hayley, no offense, but you look a little out of it. Have you--do you--"

She hitched her thumb back in the direction she came. "That last one--um--" Her voice faded and she pitched all the way forward.

Patrick dropped the hair thingy and it was by luck and reflexes honed by a passel of accident-prone kids that he caught her. "Hey!" he yelled. "Help! I need a medic!"

An older woman in a leather jacket with a pair of drumsticks sticking out of a pocket rushed over. "Here, get her on the ground--watch her head. I'm a part-time EMT."

"Thank God." Patrick and the woman eased the tiny Paramore singer down into a prone position on the grass. Patrick shrugged out of his cardigan and bunched it up to put under her head. "She just came out of the bathroom and seemed fine until--"

"Her pulse is strong." The woman lifted Hayley's eyelid. Hayley's lashes fluttered and she mumbled something. "Easy now," the older woman said. She glanced up at Patrick. "You got water? I think she's dehydrated." She reached for a walkie-talkie on her belt.

"Izzat Patrick?" Hayley mumbled.

Patrick picked up the half-empty water bottle Hayley had been carrying. "Hey, Hayley. You scared us for a minute, there."

"Y'r--y'r such a _nice_ girl, Patrick. You make a really nice girl friend."

"Uhh, thanks?"

The drummer spoke into her radio. "Yeah...female, late 20's early 30's...Hayley-something. Passed out near the back cans...she's got a friend here..." She helped Hayley sit up. "Take a drink, hon. You got any conditions? Meds? How much have you had to drink?"

"S'not--not booze. I guess coming back's...a little rougher..."

Something odd poked at the back of Patrick's mind, but he couldn't quite reach it. Like music, though, he couldn't force it. He helped the woman get Hayley to her feet and over to the medical tent and texted Taylor and their tour manager.

A few minutes later, the two men came tearing into the medical tent. "Hay-hay!" Taylor cried, then drew up short.

"When did you have time to change your hair?" the tour manager asked.

"Hay-hay, you look like hell, hon. What happened?" Taylor sat on the cot next to her. Even though she and the guitarist had never been involved romantically that Patrick knew, it was plain to see just how much he still cared for her. _Just dudes being bros_ , he thought rather ridiculously.

_I'm being stupid. Pete spent a decade publicly humping my leg on stage and it didn't bother me then_. Okay, not quite true. Pete's face plastered in his neck was a thing he had to come to understand and get used to in private, and in a whole separate context on the stage. The public component had, at times, embarrassed him and enraged him.

He'd spent a lot of time early on irritated with Pete's antics, certain that the other man was making fun of him, and later exasperated with what he felt was a clumsy and obvious attempt to boost his ego. Most of the time. There were a few significant instances when Pete said exactly the right thing at exactly the right time and the only thing in the world keeping Patrick from twitching clean apart was Pete's mouth against his neck or Pete's head on his shoulder.

Hayley just smiled up at Taylor, a dopey expression on her face. "You remember our first Warped?"

Taylor nodded.

"It could have been _so much better_."

Patrick ducked out while the three of them were engaged, feeling like an intruder. He made it to catering and collected his hash browns and coffee, then saw they were putting out mini dessert tacos. He snagged a trio in a little paper boat and one more coffee then took the shortcut back to his bus. Pete would love them.

**

Patrick had been worried for nothing. Pete didn't say a word about any sort of inappropriate boners and Patrick took the out. Pete didn't ask to sleep with him again though, and Patrick…missed it.

He compensated by spending the extra time around Joe and Andy's campfire--Andy had some sort of hand-forged Mongolian brazier or something that one of his more interesting friends had given him or made him (because trust Andy to be friends with a real live blacksmith). It burned some sort of super-efficient pellet fuel that didn't smell like anything until he sprinkled powder over it and then he could get it to smell like _everything_ , from "campfire smell" to "mountain man" to "pumpkin spice." Having a campfire that smelled like a burly lumberjack with gentle hands was a very...interesting draw. But Patrick rolled with it.

"It feels weird, you know?" Pete said to him one night when they were the last two left around the brazier and the Rocky Mountain sky stretched out above them. "I feel like there should be less fuel-efficient artisanal custom-scented fires and more running around naked with water guns."

A burst of hoots from the other side of the fairgrounds punctuated his sentence. Joe had taken to calling it "Kiddie-land" because the tour had split out into two distinct groups--the "Quiet Hours" group and the "Anything Goes" group (mostly made up of the younger bands and a few diehard roadies and techs who'd only stop partying when they were dead). There was plenty of temporary cross-pollination between the two camps--as Hoppus put it once, "It's a nice place to visit, but my days of living there are over."

"I'm sure you could get naked people and water guns over that way if you said the right things to the right people," Patrick said mildly. But something in the way Pete spoke sent a warning flare in the back of Patrick's mind. His tone was as light as Patrick kept his mild but there was just a barely-discernable backing track of dissonance that only the trained-ear of a Pete-whisperer could hear.

"It's not the same. First, I've discovered when you're in your twenties and run around naked, people find it amusing. When you do it twenty years later, people find it disturbing. Second, you can't really expect to water-balloon fight with somebody who looks at you like you're about to walk on water."

Patrick smirked. "It's the hair." He leaned over and tweaked a lock of Pete's hair. "Rock'n'Roll Jesus. Anyway, I don't miss some of that stuff. I do miss prank time, though."

Pete grinned. "Think we can get you back into a spandex bodysuit?"

Patrick snorted. "Not without a hostage situation and a stick of butter."

"Hey, cut it out now." Pete nudged him with a knee pressed companionably close. "You'll make me hungry and I'll have to get up and go get some Funyuns."

Patrick made a face. "In the name of all that's holy, please don't. You could still go over there anyway, even without a water gun. I do."

Pete raised both eyebrows (he'd never truly gotten the hang of arching one eyebrow no matter how hard he tried on his Instagram stories). "Yeah?"

"It's not enough to just see the baby bands or the locals perform on stage, y'know?" Patrick shrugged. "Who am I kidding, of course you know. You have to meet the people to see if they have what it takes."

Pete's A&R work for DCD2 put him in that position more than most, even if a lot of it had moved online and involved as much scouring social media histories as it did watching kids play in crappy bars or on grainy, shaky YouTube videos. Pete had that eye for the acts that could grow, and who could survive the sausage-factory nature of modern music.

But for Patrick, it settled something restless in him to meet the kids who'd be picking up the torch when they were no longer there to carry it. He still felt weirdly displaced every time he realized that the band was part of a whole continuum. They weren't just four kids in a shitty van screaming their hearts out in music--they were a "legacy," and to Patrick, it still felt like that sort of thing belonged to "grown-ups" and he would _never_ confuse himself with one of those.

The sense of responsibility lightened a little bit when he saw that there were still kids who loved to jam after hours, who were still excited when someone from the other side of the barrier recognized them and reached out. Kids who remembered who gave them that stuffed bear or that beanie or showed off a homemade t-shirt (well, less "homemade" now with the ease of custom printing stuff online and three-day shipping). Kids who were just...into it un-self-consciously, without thinking about branding, social media presence, influence reach, or monetization.

That night while Pete watched an episode of _Supernatural_ (why were the women Sam dated always dying in that show?), Patrick went to the back bedroom and noodled for half an hour with Garage Band, then packed up the recording equipment into the soft cases, stacked them under the bed, then stowed the laptop mic and camera setup. When he heard the TV power down and Pete's footsteps heading to the back, he stuck his head out the narrow door. "Hey."

Pete lifted his gaze from his suitcase but waited for Patrick to speak. Patrick rubbed the back of his neck. "So, uh, you know, I don't mind…" He motioned to the back bedroom.

Pete smiled. "Thanks, Patrick." But he climbed into the bunk.

Patrick chased sleep in futility until he finally got up and dragged his pillow and comforter into the empty bunk below Pete. He could hear even breathing and the faint, tinny sound of Mazzy Star from an earbud that probably fell out of Pete's ear. It was hard not to think of it as a rejection. "Fade into you…" Patrick hugged his pillow and sang along softly as the song played on repeat until just before dawn.

**

Patrick didn't exactly avoid Pete the next two days as they rolled out to the next stop on the tour. Pete had booked a blitz of interviews with multiple band members on east coast stations to boost ticket sales in one of the locations in the southeast that needed juice, so for part of the journey, their bus had several in-person guests including Brendon, who monopolized Patrick's time picking out jazzy horn runs and lyrics he was workshopping to go with it.

Patrick didn't have the heart to point out how much his lyrics were leaning back towards echoing the _Pretty. Odd_. era and wondered if he and Ryan had spoken. He asked Spencer discreetly about it via text and got back a negative. "Brendon, maybe you want to keep the lyrics simpler through the verses and the chorus--get creative in the bridge, but you don't want your words fighting with the horns because the horns will win. Remember, you're good at this."

"I feel like I need to be better, you know? Everybody's had a reset after the whole worldwide pandemic thing and I'm still…my sound hasn't changed."

Patrick put a hand on his friend's shoulder. "A lot has changed. But look at the people we see in the crowds, this tour--when everything is different, people still needed a few things they could count on to be the same. Panic can be one of them. You still have time to change when it feels right and when you're ready. For now, stick with the sick horns."

The last travel night, Patrick had back-bedroom time to record a last-minute voice over project that landed in his inbox. It was only a few lines so he made himself a little pillow fort of egg-crate foam to cut down the noise of the road under the tires and spoke the lines, trying out different inflections for each one. At one point, he felt the door open and something shift and simply re-recorded the line--he'd clean it up in editing or throw out that iteration.

Once he finished the recording, he burst out of the foam like a stripper popping out of a (very dry and tasteless) cake to find Pete curled up on the other side of the bed among the soft cases, not really sleeping. Pete opened one eye. "Stay."

Patrick shut down and packed the equipment away and rolled up the egg crate. He turned out the lamp so that only the highway lights cast strips of light over the bed. "I'm here."

"This time I'll be the big spoon."

Something tightened in his chest and he was about to open his mouth to apologize for the inappropriate boner the other night. But Pete just pulled him up against his chest. "Stop thinking."

He did and started breathing again.

**

Patrick found himself at that same back bank of port-a-johns in a different location--this time in the upper midwest where an easily-navigable soybean field was the only thing standing between the back fence and an interstate highway that could support any number of nomadic serial killers or murderous truckers hell-bent on vengeance.

Only they'd never have a chance to carve up Patrick's tender flesh because he was currently caught between a drunk and exuberant Brendon and an oblivious, but high-speed, Ryan Ross both heading for intercept and the explosion would leave a blast crater that could be seen from orbit. "Oh, hey Patrick! Jus' gotta take a leak and I'll--I wanna--"

"Sure, no problem, uh--" Patrick glanced behind him, saw Ross booking it this way, and made an executive decision. He spun Urie around and fumbled for the door to the last john in the row and shoved the younger man inside. "There you go, buddy."

"Y'gonna hold it for me, too?" Brendon laughed like a hyena at his own joke.

Patrick ignored the humming and the tinkling and stepped up to Ross. "Hey, how you doin', man? Warm night, isn't it?" Crisis averted. He was so busy leading Ryan away from the last john that he didn't even notice when the humming stopped.

It wasn't until Nicole came looking for him to help look for Brendon long after the end of the barbecue that Patrick, on a hunch, went back to the bank of port-a-johns and banged on the last door in the row. Brendon did come stumbling out, took one look at Patrick, and burst into loud sobs. "Do--not--go--in--there--ever!"

Patrick did his best to calm the younger man down and finally delivered him to Nicole. "I've got him," she murmured. "Sarah got here earlier. She's on our bus. She'll handle him."

**

He and Pete started to make a habit of drifting over to the young side of the traveling trailer park that was the tour's "living space," even if they didn't stay long. For Patrick, there was something bittersweet about seeing these young people in a behind-the-scenes environment where they most fit in, and he said as much to Pete.

"I think I miss the flexibility more than anything else," Pete said as they passed three-quarters of a girl band sitting cross-legged in a line and braiding each other's hair, folding themselves easily into each other's space.

Patrick glanced at a pair of EDM DJs-turned-touring musicians still too young to grow full beards curled together like puppies on a blanket beneath a sunshade, both of their faces unmarked and their presence un-remarked. "Flexibility. Yeah."

Pete followed his gaze. And his train of thought. "Kinda weird not to see Sharpie'd dicks on faces, innit?"

"The kids are all right, I guess."

That night they finally got a hotel night. Patrick spent too much time in the shower and sprawled out on the queen-sized bed like an X with a head while Pete went in there and drew a whole-ass fucking bath because why not. Patrick heard him talking in there and on a hunch, checked his social media under the anonymous account that was his only presence on the internet these days.

Sure enough, Pete was doing another "Bathtub Q&A" live stream. Patrick just rolled his eyes and put some popcorn in the room's microwave. Since he was on the internet, he followed a wild thought and searched the news about the young bands that were playing with them in this part of the country.

He bypassed the usual stuff--local alt-rag reviews of their performances, EPs or albums, press releases--and ended up on tumblr and some weird parts of twitter where he found the expected mad-crush posts, gifsets, and reblogs of grainy-video'd performances. What he found a refreshing lack of was the stuff in the middle.

Granted, blogs like ONTD had drifted off into the sunset along with their LiveJournal culture in favor of modern social media, but even the second-rate music blogs weren't introducing these young people through speculation about their personal lives. Instead, the bands themselves were pulling the audience into their lives in ninety-second viral video clips, soundcloud samples, and tweet streams a hundred percent more curated than Pete's or his own had ever been.

What stood out to him was the lack of newsworthiness their private lives engendered. Maybe it was because they were native to the lack of privacy that life lived online presented. But to Patrick, the fact that their private lives--specifically their love lives--just didn't seem as newsworthy. They voluntarily slid themselves into the spotlight, and somehow that got them out from under the microscope.

He checked back in with Pete's live stream. Most of it was the kids (or rather, the adults, because let's face it, more than a few of their fans were aging along with them), most of it was polite except for the occasional spammy string of emojis and "Play GINASFS live you cowards!" There was a second column of checkmark-verified people with press affiliations after their names and questions queued up that Pete's assistant had stickied for him to answer and others that hadn't made the cut.

Not one of even the rejects asked about his sex life or commented on the fact that the sparkly bubbles that protected his lower half were beginning to pop. While Patrick couldn't seem to take his eyes away.

That night, he dreamed about bathtubs and bubbles sliding over inked skin.

**

Patrick had traveled all over the country as a young man and by far, the ass end of the midwest was the area where it was least surprising to encounter weird shit. This time, they were lucky enough that the weird shit was a meteor shower and a healthy crowd of after-hours socializing was spent at the back end of the campsite on a patchy stretch of grass with the overhead lights temporarily unplugged. People had brought blankets and camp chairs and everybody who could was laid on their backs staring up at the darkened skies.

Cries of, "Ooh, there!" and "I just saw one!" filtered over the collected assembly. Patrick and Pete were laid on an extra blanket, their heads together and their legs stretched to opposite sides. Nothing but an occasional, "There's one," passed between them and Patrick couldn't be more content.

Except he would have loved to have his boys here, too. He'd FaceTimed them earlier that day and told them about the meteor shower and they were going to see it at the planetarium but LA's light pollution would probably make it less of a show than out here in the middle of nowhere. "Sometime after the tour," he said, "You and I should take the kids camping. We'll rent one of those big-ass RVs and go up into the mountains."

"Just us and six kids." Pete laughed and it sounded low and intimate in Patrick's ear. "You son of a bitch, I'm in."

An hour later, people were drifting away as the bulk of the sky show had ended. Pete turned and let out an audible groan. "All right, that's enough lying on the ground for me." Pete pushed to his feet and held out a hand. "Let's go before we have to call First Aid to help us up."

Patrick didn't think twice about taking it and letting his best friend pull him to his feet. He did think twice about needing First Aid when his hip gave an audible pop and Pete laughed. "Yeah, yeah, something-something old people."

They ambled across the lot, passing buses and touring vans (nice touring vans and only the occasional beater--even an economic slump could reveal a few things that didn't suck and one of them was deep discounts on large vehicles in an economy whose production outpaced its consumption for a hot minute).

In between the medical pavilion ("Shut up, Pete.") and its skeleton crew of one awake first aid tech and the snores of a host of paramedics coming from the tent behind it and the darkened catering tent, Patrick tugged on Pete's hand ( _why are we still holding hands?_ He wondered why he hadn't wondered up to now) in front of the bank of port-a-johns. "Hang on, I gotta pee. Again."

Pete chuckled. "Whoever thought we'd be the ones missing our creature comforts. Or the ability to cross the parking lot without having to take a leak."

"Me." Patrick tugged his hat down further over his eyes, shoved his hands in the pockets of his jeans, and headed towards the row of johns. The portable parking-lot light that shone down illuminated most of the row enough to see a not-insignificant number of red half-moons indicating no vacancy. A host of moths and other nocturnal insects whizzed around the light and created an audible soundtrack to the crunch of Patrick's shoes over the ground.

The light didn't quite reach the last stall, but a pair of young women stumbled out the door.

"Wait--Tee, c'mere, lemme hold your hand."

"Just don't lick my face again, dude. You have Funyuns-breath and it's fuckin' disgusting."

Patrick couldn't see the young women clearly but something about their voices sounded familiar. Or maybe it was the Funyuns. The dark-haired girl's hair fell in front of her face as she leaned into her friend's personal space and stuck her tongue out. "Nyum-nyum-nyum you love my Funyuns breath."

The Funyuns-victim leaned away and Patrick noticed a hat perched on her head between two short pigtails of lighter color. "Ugh! I don't know how anybody'd want to kiss your gross pie-hole, let alone Mikey Way--"

Patrick blinked. Three things jumped into his mind. The first was that the pair reminded him so much of himself and Pete, only with about fifteen years shaved off. The second was that Mikey Way and the rest of My Chem weren't joining the tour until the next stop. The third thing was that the Mikey Way he knew, knew better than to mix it up with girls who didn't even look legal.

"Ahem."

The pair froze in mid-struggle. "Hey, do we know you?"

Patrick folded his arms. "The question is whether I know you. You're not allowed to be back here without a pass." Christ, he felt like a dad.

The blonde edged closer to the slightly taller dark-haired girl. In the weak light, Patrick could see her arms, dotted with tattoos, as she folded them across her chest. "You mean you don't know who we are?"

Patrick rubbed the spot between his eyes. "Sorry, I haven't gotten to meet all the bands here yet. Look, I'd hate for you kids to get in trouble with Security and if one of them catches you without your lanyards and badges--"

"Yo, Patrick! Did you fall in?" Pete trotted up behind him. "Oh, hey. We haven't met. I'm Pete Wentz from Fall Out Boy."

The blonde girl peeked out from behind her darker-haired friend. "Real funny, asshole."

Pete's face froze. Patrick recognized the jolt in his best friend's posture. "Excuse me?" he said.

The dark-haired girl's hand twitched towards her companion's. "Easy does it, Trix. Charlie probably found some old geezer friends to prank us." She pointed a middle finger at Patrick. "This one's gonna say his name is Patrick Stump or something." Her broad grin seemed unsettlingly familiar. "Who put you up to this? Was it Charlie? Bob?"

Patrick glanced over at Pete who was really frowning now. "How do you guys know Charlie?"

"Charlie retired," Patrick said at the same time.

The dark-haired girl's lip curled up into a sneer and-- _oh, Lord Jesus_ , Patrick thought, _I know that sneer better than my own face. No, that's impossible_. He did the math. If she was 18 and-- _no, not even then_. Pete didn't go for the type of girl who _wouldn't_ come after him with a paternity suit.

"If you mean retired to Jo-Jo and Andy's bus, then maybe." She stood on her tiptoes and peered around them. "Charlie! Come on out! I know you're out there!"

"Jo-Jo and Andy?" Pete cleared his throat.

Patrick was still stuck in gaping-fish mode. _If not that, then…No, that's even more impossible. They've gotta be cosplayers or something_.

"Charlie retired three years ago," Pete said. "Look, if you guys snuck in, that's cool, but you better scram before Security really does catch you. If you want us to sign something we could do it real quick but it's not safe for you to be back here."

"Your outfits are pretty cool, though," Patrick said by way of consolation. "You really look the part."

"Look the part?" The girl with the Wentzian sneer drew herself up. "You saying we're some sort of fakes?"

"Okay, joke's over." The blonde stepped out from behind her friend, arms folded. "You're not Peep Wentz, and don't even try to tell me you're some dude-version of me." She shook her head. "I do not get Bob's sense of humor sometimes, but whatever. You guys wanna be us, you're welcome to go do all the heavy lifting tomorrow. Our set starts at 11 am on the Bishop stage. Be there fifteen minutes before." She tugged the other girl's arm. "Come on, Peep. Let's go find our bus."

" _Peep_ Wentz?" Pete tilted his head and appeared to consider it.

Patrick glanced over at him and just thought, no. "The…Bishop…stage?"

"Yeah. What'sa matter? You think it's only a boys' club over there? Fuck you, we earned that spot! It's 2005, not 1955!"

Patrick reached back for Pete's hand. Pete cleared his throat. "Umm…oo-kay…we're going to just go now."

The blonde tugged on one pigtail. Even in the weak light, Patrick could see blotchy color bloom on her cheeks. He could relate. "Tell Charlie and Bob to piss off. This wasn't funny. We _earned_ that spot. We just made the Billboard Hot 100!"

He shared another look with Pete. Pete's expression said what he was thinking. Either they had some very dedicated fans that actually researched for a prank, or-- "No," he said. "No way."

"Look at the way she's standing," Pete murmured. "That's a Stump about to go off if I ever saw one."

"Pats wait--" The dark-haired girl linked her arm with the blonde and pulled her back. "I got an idea."

Patrick's brain had short-circuited right around the time the darker girl's sneer, plus the blonde's words clicked in his head. But then the darker girl-- _Peep, oh dear lord_ \--unzipped her hoodie and reached for the hem of her shirt.

"Let's see how far you guys went to prank us."

Patrick backed up. "Hey, whoa--Danger, Will Robinson!" It wasn't like they'd never encountered fans with similar ideas. They _never_ encouraged it and went so far as to actively _dis_ courage it as soon as they signed with Fueled By Ramen all those years ago. No boobs, no asses.

"Chill out, Dad-hat. I just want to see if Man-bun here's really devoted to the prank. Come on--let's see the belly." The girl called Peep lifted her shirt. Her jeans were already damn near criminally low-cut but even in the weak parking lot light, Patrick saw the top of the tattoo he knew almost as well as his own face.

To Patrick's horror, Pete pulled up his own hoodie with one hand and hooked the opposite thumb into the waistband of his sweatpants.

Patrick's arm went out, slamming into Pete's midsection. " _Jesus_ , Pete! You can't do that!"

"What--I wasn't gonna--" Pete stopped and his mouth dropped open. "You _really_ thought--"

"Of course I didn't," Patrick snapped before he could finish the thought. "But other people would, and _you_ didn't think at all." He turned to the smirking young woman whose flat-ironed hair fell over one eye. Her hair wasn't as long as Pete's was now, but the red streak in it framed her face in a spiky, sleek curve that ended at her shoulders. "Pick another tattoo," he said.

Peep's companion tilted her head back and fuck if Patrick didn't know that move. Her chin jutted out and though her eyes were still mostly hidden by the beanie he could read her body language enough to know she was paying closer attention and rearranging her mental assumptions about him.

_Fair enough, I'm doing the same thing for you_. One of those opinions he had to revise was that if this-- _version_ of him was anything like the _real_ him-- _but are you the real Patrick Stump or just the alternative version? God, my head hurts_. But if this teenage girl was a close enough analog to him then he looked a lot more put-together on the outside than he realized.

"Let's just say for a minute that--hypothetically--you two are half of Fall Out Boy. Er, girl?" Pete said.

"Boy, asshole. It's a character from The Simpsons. And there's no 'hypothetically' about it." She was shrugging out of her hoodie to reveal a blue and black striped shirt that gaped at the worn-out neckline and fuck if Patrick didn't know that shirt. But she was rolling up the sleeve and flexed one toned arm. "Let's see."

Pete struggled out of his sweatshirt. His shirt rode up in the midst, revealing his belly and the blonde girl gasped. "Shut. Up. There's no way--Peep, look!"

Pete was still fighting his way through the sweatshirt, which had gotten stuck on his bun. Patrick gave up and yanked the thing the rest of the way over Pete's head. He flexed his own arm--considerably larger than the scrawny girl-version of himself ( _Oh, that's not sitting right at all_ , Patrick thought)--and pointed at the matching keyhole tattoo right below the "Unlovable" ribbon.

Patrick's attention was dragged towards the blonde. "Um," he said and asked the first thing that popped into his mind. "Do you have to work for it to hit a C6?"

**

Once it was established that the two young women were, in fact, versions of Patrick Stump and Pete Wentz ("Peep? Why Peep?" "You really want to know?" "Yes." "Penelope."), Pete broke the news to them that they weren't in 2005 anymore.

Patrick's teenage counterpart--Patricia, no drama there--bit her lip. "So what happened between then and now?"

"A whole bunch of stuff," Pete said.

"And we probably shouldn't tell you about any of it. We could screw up a timeline or something." Patrick adjusted his hat nervously. "But how did you get from where you are--where _are_ you, by the way--to _here?_ "

"We're at Warped Tour like I said. The Bishop stage and we fucking earned it." Peep's sneer came out again.

"I believe you," Patrick said. "How did you get here? What were you doing beforehand?"

"Did Gerard Way draw any pentagrams on you or sprinkle you with voodoo dust?"

"Who?" Patricia frowned. "Mikey's only got a sister. Anyway, we didn't do anything special. We were coming back from watching Paramore and Peep had to pee but this tour is full of _gross unwashed slobs_ who don't know how to _aim_ \--"

"Some of them are us, Trix."

"Trix?" Pete repeated and Patrick knew that crinkle around his eyes.

"Don't even," he muttered.

"How many nicknames do you have for her?" Pete asked.

"She's averaging five new ones a day," Patricia retorted. "It goes down to three if I get my hands around her neck."

Pete's grin grew wide. "Nice to know that some things don't change."

"So she had to pee and what?" Patrick pressed.

"We went into the haunted one. Peep had a whiz, we unlocked and came out here."

"The haunted one?"

"Yeah, weird shit keeps happening around it. This old guy came out of it once, and then--I just started a label and signed this band and I think one of their dads was wandering around here, kept begging for people's phones to call the band. I kept trying to find him and tell him they're recording and to leave them the fuck alone but--" Peep shrugged.

"So that's why he was such a mess," Patrick murmured. "They never played Warped."

"Oh! Don't forget Hay-hay came out with a whole different hair color!" Patricia grabbed Peep's arm. "She's changed it back since."

"I'm glad because that blonde made her look a little too grown-up. She's like, sixteen." Peep draped herself over her friend. "I got no room to talk with this one, but she's at least legal."

Patrick took a minute to catch on, then his eyes widened. Pete said it before he could. "Wait, you two are _together?_ "

"We live in a gummi bear castle on a cloud where the sun always shines and nobody's ever sad," Peep said.

Patrick didn't need to see Patricia roll her eyes so he was watching girl-Pete's expression as it flickered from the mocking grin to a genuine longing, and back to the irony as soon as Patricia turned her head and said, "Sure, we do. Wentz takes a lot of drugs."

"You got brain worms, too, old-me?" Peep asked, a challenge in her voice as if daring Pete to judge her.

Pete's expression shifted into one of resolve that Patrick recognized as his 'PSA about mental health' face and he nodded. "There's no shame in getting help. I don't hide what I am." His fingers bunched in the hoodie he'd slung over one arm.

Patrick noted out of the corner of his eye the way his female self's fingers tangled with her best friend's, resting on her opposite hip. Her features stayed neutral but she didn't push Peep away. He wondered what this version of him had gone through, being stuffed in a van with a girl version of Pete. Was girl-Pete just as clingy? Was she a 'make-out queen' that pushed the boundaries with the way she dressed and who she locked lips with?

The rest of the meteor-watching party seemed to be breaking up from the field and Patrick could hear more people coming this way. "Uhh, you guys--you can't be here." Pete met his eyes and nodded once.

"I have so many questions," Patsy protested.

But Patrick broke his rule about touching himself and turned her by the shoulders to propel her towards the last john. "Nope. Not gonna fuck with timelines, no how and no way."

Peep hung on but his Pete had twenty extra years to read Patrick's mind and poked her right in the earth tattoo. "Come on, Alice. Back down the rabbit hole with you."

Peep jerked away. "Okay, fine. But just tell me one thing--are we huge? Do they know who we are?"

"How do we make it?" Patsy chimed in. "Was I right about _Sugar?_ Should we have kept that extra bridge in _Dance, Dance?_ " She stepped up into the cubicle. The scents of antiseptic and piss wafted out.

Patrick figured it wouldn't hurt to give something so obvious away. If Sugar was already on the charts, it'd just go up. "You were right about _Sugar_. Leave the bridge out."

"Don't listen to the hype," Pete said.

Peep scooted in behind her. "Okay, old-timer. I hope we didn't sell out."

Patrick let the door fall closed and the hinge squeaked. At the last minute, Peep's hand darted out and she grabbed Pete's hoodie, yanking it into the port-a-potty. "Hey!" Pete yelled. He grabbed for the door latch but it had already turned over to red. "Give me my hoodie back! That's mine!"

Patrick sighed. "Wow. Girl-you is kind of a dick."

"No shit. Me-me was kind of a dick back then, too." Pete's face wore that pinched look that said he was about to lose his temper and trying not to show it where it could be photographed.

Patrick shrugged out of his sweater. "You cold?"

"It's not that--" Pete's eyes grew wide. "Oh shit. It's my merch."

"Not the merch-hoarding thing again." Patrick scrubbed a hand down the side of his face.

"No, I mean it's _my_ merch. It says 'Pete Wentz' on it. It's from my solo thing. It's from _their_ future."

**

"Okay, I'm 90% certain that it shouldn't matter. It's just a hoodie, what could happen?" Patrick paced up and down the aisle of the bus. It was even later than he wanted to stay up but meeting oneself as a young girl was doing some weird shit to his brain. On the way back, Patrick had given Pete a rundown of the people he met coming out of the time-traveling port-a-potty.

"So Urie came out a blubbering mess, and Bill Beckett is still walking around like he saw Jesus and met Jimi Hendrix."

"And I think Hayley Williams spent two weeks in there. She played a bunch of shows with red hair and our girl-selves were talking about a blonde Hayley. When she came out and landed on me, she looked pretty dazed. I think the longer you stay in the wrong timeline, the more it affects you. They actually had to cancel a performance the other day."

"Okay, so we can't stay." Pete sat at the table in the lounge and booted up his laptop. "Girl-you had some nice curves on her."

Patrick turned red. "I noticed the pigtails where my sideburns would be. How weird is that?"

"It was adorable. I bet girl-me pulls them all the time." Pete hadn't stopped grinning since they decided to regroup on the bus. "If you're tired, you can lie down while I look for something real quick."

Patrick shook his head vigorously. "We just met ourselves as young women. The last thing I want to do is fall asleep. My subconscious would have a field day with that."

"You think you'd have dreams about girl-me, too?" Pete laughed and it was tinged with evil.

"Now I will because you said it." Patrick blushed. "You've always been pretty." Pete of any gender was just beautiful. "Also I hate you."

Pete's laugh grew more robust. "So have you, but you won't believe it. I'm totally dreaming of hot-girl you tonight."

"Have I mentioned I hate you?" Patrick adjusted his hat.

"Fine, I'll dream of hot-girl me with hot-girl you."

"You're making it worse!"

Pete typed, clicked, then frowned down at the screen, his fingers steepled. "I wonder--do you think--is hot-girl me as bad at long-term relationships as I am?"

Patrick followed the track Pete was laying down because it went to Self-Loathingville and he knew all the stops. "If they wrote _Sugar_ and _Dance, Dance_ , it's a good bet they wrote _Take This To Your Grave_ without much difference, which means you have the same kind of luck with relationships. But girl-me still loves you anyway."

"Hot-girl you," Pete corrected.

"She's--she's cute."

"She's _hot_. Hot-girl me has no problem saying so, and hot-girl you listens to her."

"Well, listen to old-dad me. You are not bad at long-term relationships." _Pete Wentz's most stable long term relationship…_

"I think we've got the ten-percent problem." Pete turned the laptop and interrupted his train of thought. 

Patrick squinted through his glasses at the screen. "How many pages down Google did you go for this?"

"A bunch. But look. It's 'vintage' dated 2006. The design's already filtered backward in time and not just in their universe." The page showed a pink t-shirt with Pete's magic crystal design from the pandemic. "In _ours_. That means 2006 me made the design and that doesn't--I wasn't ready for this design then."

"Okay so, I'll go get the hoodie back." Patrick shrugged on his jacket. "I hope they're still awake."

"I'm coming with. And they'll be awake."

**

Pete unlatched the door and burst out in a whiff of piss and hand sanitizer, Patrick following hard on his heels. The parking lot looked almost the same, but the feel of the night air was different. Patrick caught the cuffs of his denim jacket in between his fingers. "Pete, nobody who's come out of that porta-potty has been...quite right. I don't even know what we're going to see here."

"Me neither, but I have a good idea it's going to involve ourselves as teenage girls. Well, you anyway. I'm in my twenties." Pete rubbed his hands together. "If we're girls, why do we still call ourselves Fall Out Boy? I'd have gone with something like Furious Unicorns or something."

"I--don't know. I don't even remember what we were throwing around before that. But I do remember paper with our names were taped on the bus front windows and Ray Toro and Joe ran around and wrote names on the backs in the dirt with their fingers because they kept going to the Dropkick Murphys bus when they were drunk."

"The Murphys almost drop-kicked me that one time I went to get Joe." Pete laughed a low and sweet sound that crawled into Patrick's head and reminded him that they were visitors here who only had each other.

Patrick pulled him to the left. "My memory isn't the greatest, but I do remember we were on the uphill side of things more often than not."

"That's why Joe and Ray kept rolling downhill into the wrong bus." Pete linked his arm with Patrick's.

The further away they went from the bank of johns, the thicker the hazy air felt. The lights of the buses looked soft and golden. "Pete, what if we can't get back? Maybe we should just--let things be."

Pete turned and looked at him. "No way. I've got to get that hoodie back. 2005 Me is not ready for that design. Those shapes and angles, the weight of the lines--they all mean something. They're like, magic and intention."

It sounded like bullshit to Patrick but Pete had always ridden a little streak of magical thinking and Patrick couldn't deny they'd ridden it to a pretty awesome place. "If it means that much to you, we go get it."

They wandered uphill, skulking from bus shadow to bus shadow. The place was still very lively--bursts of laughter, music, the sounds of video games, all came from open bus windows and floated out of roof vents. The whiff of diesel and the odor of deep-fried festival food hung in the air.

Patrick looked up. "Here it is. Fall Out Boy." A wave of nostalgia hit him right in the knees. "Hey, you remember the time the stage almost collapsed?" Patrick remembered looking out over the sea of people, the swirling eddies of pop-up mosh circles, eyeliner and flat-ironed hair, and feeling like the world was just at his fingertips but Pete's face was smushed into his neck, keeping him from spinning away into the currents of the crowd.

Pete crept forward and motioned for Patrick to follow. Together, they peeked around the side of the bus and stopped short.

"Are you seeing what I'm seeing," he asked Pete.

Pete nodded as his fingers dug into his arm, pressing past the sleeve of his denim jacket. "Joey-T, girl edition," he whispered, "is fucking _built_."

"She's also nineteen," Patrick said. "And we are disgusting old men."

The version of Joe Trohman their younger, girlier selves called "Jo-Jo" was just as tall as their own Joe, with hair just as wild, but she wore it just below her chin, the wild riot of curls framing her face and drawing her blue, blue eyes out among features that were just as strong as dude-Joe's. She was leaned against the side of the bus with one of the spare guitars, her fingers going through riffs and runs, and her head bobbing in that Trohman way that would probably cross endless alternate universes of possibility.

"I'm so jealous of her eyebrows," Pete said.

"I wonder if she does the Trohmania in that skirt," Patrick muttered.

"I wanna see girl-Andy."

"Yeah, you guys are gonna have to piss in another magic port-a-potty for that." Peep popped up from around the other corner of the bus. "Andy's our token guy. He gets us _into_ bars and _out of_ bar fights."

"You were expecting us," Pete said.

" _I'd_ chase me." Peep smirked. "Especially if I was this hot."

"Therapy," Patrick muttered. " _Lots and lots_ of therapy. Listen, we need the hoodie back."

Patricia popped around the corner, ball caps in her hands. "Thought I'd find you here," she said to Peep. "But I thought _you'd_ know better. Fucking with the timeline? Put these on so you look like you belong."

Patrick glanced upward. "Brought my own, thanks."

"Yours doesn't say 'security,' bonehead." Tricia thrust a hat into his face. "How long have I been a himbo in your universe?"

"Pretty much from the start," Pete answered. "But he's got a great ass."

Tricia jammed the second hat down over Pete's man-bun. "I see you're just as full of bullshit as a dude, Peep."

Peep's lips stretched into a grin as she shot an adoring look at the pigtailed blonde. "I keep telling you it's not bullshit and I mean every word."

Tricia scowled and ducked her head. Pete stifled a snort of laughter. "Boy do I recognize that move." He poked Patrick in the side. "Baby seasons change, but people don't."

"Oh, that's eerie," Peep said. "That's--I just wrote that in my journal. I'm not ready to share it."

For once, Pete stopped fidgeting and met his counterpart's eyes. "You will be. Patr--Patsy will know when it's time and where it goes."

The blonde girl nodded and bit her lip, looking down, then over at Peep like she was the only thing in the world. But when Peep glanced over at her, Tricia's gaze had already flicked away.

To Patrick. He bit his own lip and felt the bottom drop out of his stomach. What he saw there in her eyes tore him right out of his body and back to his own version of 2005--one long gut-clench of confusion and nerves on the inside. But if his outside looked anything like his female counterpart--God, no wonder the gossip blogs had such a field day.

Pete wasn't done speaking. "I've trusted Patrick with my words for twenty years and I'll trust him for two hundred more." And apparently, this night wasn't done flattening him with revelations, either.

"Oh--" The sudden lump in his throat made it hard for him to speak. "Pete."

Peep looked from Pete to him and back again. "I'll get there," she mumbled. "My mouth goes faster than anything else."

"My heart will always be the B side to my tongue," Pete said.

Tricia suddenly gaped at Patrick. "You let him do that in your world, too? Those were--those songs weren't _ready!_ "

Patrick pressed his lips together. "I know! But none of it really, truly ever feels ready. You just gotta let it out there. Let the audience decide." He jerked his head towards Pete. "He knows what he's doing. Trust him with that stuff." He shoved his hands in the pockets of his jeans. "You won't, and you'll argue, but he's-- _she's_ \--gonna be right."

Peep surprised him by flinging herself at him. Patrick staggered back and caught her. "Thank you," she said into his collar while his brain shorted out at having an armful of twenty-five-year old girl Pete. _So. Much. Therapy_.

But he would never _not_ hug a Pete in any universe, so he patted her back once and released her.

"I guarantee you he will never admit he said that when we get back home," Pete was saying to Tricia. "He will panic and want to make last-minute changes right up to pressing the masters." Pete grinned. "After that, it'll be _his_ turn to peel _me_ off the ceiling."

"Tell me more," Trish said, leaning against the side of the bus.

"You, come into my office." Peep pulled Patrick a bit away from Trish and Pete.

"If you're asking me for baseball scores in the future, I can't help you," he said.

Peep tossed her hair and laughed and it was so close to the laugh that led him on so many adventures for so many years, the laugh he missed when it wasn't in his ear, the laugh that always seemed to guide him back home.

It must have shown on his face because her smile lit up. "I know you don't do sports in any universe. Trix is a competitive napper and a marathon couch potato." He decided not to tell her about the pre-diabetes in his counterpart's future. If Pete of 2005 had known, he would have been relentless about "saving" Patrick from himself and it would all have just made things worse than they already were in 2009.

Peep continued. "No, I just--I've been wracking my brain. How did--" she licked her lips and God, was that ever Pete. "--how did the two of you--" she lowered her voice to a whisper, "-- _come out?_ "

Patrick blinked. "I'm--uh--" Blurting out an 'I'm not gay' hadn't sounded anything but defensive and insulting to him since sometime around 2008 when Pete led the press on a merry rhetorical chase around the "is he, or isn't he?" question they loved to play with every celebrity. "I mean--we're not--"

_Pete Wentz's longest stable relationship has been with Patrick Stump._

Peep's smile faltered. "You're not what? Out?" Her eyes grew round. " _Together?_ "

Patrick stuttered and Peep held up her hand. "No! Don't tell me. I can't--just--" She backed away, looking ready to bolt.

Patrick's internal distress responded to Peep's external trouble. "Hey now--" He caught one of her hands. "I won't give away secrets, but--it's complicated." _Wow, did that sound like the Stump doth protest too much_. "What I mean is--me and Pete--Pete and I are more…complex than something as simple as people think. You already know this." He lowered his head and adjusted his hat.

He fell back on the diplomatic answer he'd chosen for a tweet. "Look, if straight is a thing that exists, then I'm straight. If I weren't, I'd embrace that publicly. I have way too many scared and confused LGBT fans who are getting bullied. I wouldn't hide it if I were gay."

Peep's lip curled up in a skeptical sneer and her forehead crinkled. "After all the time you had, you still suck this badly at press dodges?"

"That wasn't for an interview! That was--the best I could do. Not that it's anybody else's business. I didn't even want to answer, but we have fans who needed to hear--something."

Peep was now glaring at him like he'd disappointed her. "And you came up with that much _word salad_ instead of saying, 'I'm into chicks but LGBT rights.' Or just plain old, 'LGBT rights, motherfuckers.' and left it at that?"

"First off--it's women, not chicks--my mother would--" he huffed. "And second--second--" Here he faltered. Why did he need so many words? An explanation? Qualifiers?

"It's called comp-het." A soft-spoken voice filtered out of the dark between buses from the opposite side. A slender, waif-like young woman with a fire-engine red pixie cut slipped out of the shadows. "Compulsory heterosexuality. Society defines the default state as 'heterosexual' and deviation from it is punished, suppressed, or oppressed." She drifted forward and held out her hand. "I'm Gigi Way."

Patrick took her hand out of habit and shook it once. "I'm Patrick S--Patrick Vaughn." He tried not to gape. Gerard Way had been ethereal as a guy (and genderfluid, Patrick reminded himself. He'd plugged the new pronouns into his contact list so he wouldn't forget). As a woman, she was downright magical. Patrick wouldn't be surprised to see gossamer wings sprouting out her back.

Gigi eyed him with a sort of wary amusement. "Peep, are you good?"

"I dunno, Geege. Wouldn't you tell the world when you found the best thing that ever happened to you?"

Now Gigi's expression turned cooler. "I'd have a hard time believing this guy's the best thing that ever happened to _anybody_. You, on the other hand--"

"Wow. Ouch," Patrick muttered. The ground under his feet felt a little bit like quicksand. "You have this all wrong. This--" He motioned between himself and the younger girl-Pete, "-- _we_ \--are not a thing."

"Apparently, we'll never be," Peep retorted. To Gigi, she said, "Your brother's probably looking for me. I know I said tonight we were doing something but, well, something came up." She motioned to Patrick.

_So Mikey's still a dude_. He wondered how many other members of My Chem had swapped genders, or if anyone in Panic flipped. Or was gay here but straight back in his, er, home universe. _Do we really just…assume straightness like that?_

The red-haired girl hooked a thumb at Patrick. "Mister Mid-life identity crisis, here?" Patrick buried his face in his hands. _This is what I was afraid of._ But Gigi Way was just as laser-focused as Gerard, and she went in for the kill. "Let me solve this problem for you. If you have to qualify the definition of 'straight' in order for you to fit yourself into it, guess what?"

_Patrick Stump's longest stable relationship has been Pete Wentz_.

"Geege, don't be mad." Peep put her arm around the redhead. "It's not what it looks like. This guy's a…family friend. He's important to Patsy."

"Oh." Gigi's face cleared a little. "I…can see the resemblance." She leaned her forehead against Peep's shoulder. "Carry on, then. It's not like you have to choose between one or the other. Logic gates are for electronics, not emotions."

"Tell Mikes I'll text him later." She waggled her fingers at My Chem's lead singer.

Gigi evaporated and Patrick shoved his hands into his pockets again. "I'm--I may be having a little bit of an attitude adjustment here. I thought I already figured everything out about myself." He shook his head to clear it, especially when he looked into the face of his best friend, girl version, time-warped back to one of the most unstable times in their lives, and saw her face full of distress and uncertainty the minute her friend flitted out of range.

"No, you just didn't want to. Patsy's good at _not_ figuring things out when she doesn't want to." Her tone held a little mockery and a lot of hurt. "She _makes_ it complicated."

"It _is_ ," he insisted. "We have more than twenty years of history together. A-a working partnership, a _creative tension_ between us that involves a lot of people and it's--it's not just about us!"

"You're supposed to love him!" Peep folded her arms.

"And I do! He's like--" Patrick snapped his jaw shut. The qualifiers-- _he's like a brother to me, no homo, we have a very unusual way of working together_ \--they all sounded like excuses to him now. _Do I love him? Yes. Yes I love him. No qualifications required_.

He took the twenty-five-year-old girl's hand in both of his and stared into her face. Nineteen-year-old Patrick would never even have thought of speaking to a girl like her, too terrified and twitchy and intimidated to open his mouth at all, let alone sing for her. Hell, thirty-eight-year-old Patrick was having a hard time talking to her right now.

"I--you and Patricia have to live out your own timeline, not try to mimic ours." He shrugged and thought of fistfights in the studio, champagne and fried chicken, _ohfuckshe'spregnant_ , _we liked you better fat_ , celebrity divorce, not breathing for years at a time. He did _not_ think of parking lots or blue and yellow signs. If he even _breathed_ it, that could plant the idea into her head.

"Twenty years is a lot of time." He scratched the back of his neck, that hindbrain of his still turning over some new concepts and finding places for them to fit in. He glanced over at the corner of the bus where he could just see the outline of Pete's man-bun and wonder what he was telling the young girl version of Patrick. "There are things you'll want--things _we_ wanted. Things we needed to do to grow. To grow _up_."

Peep tilted her head to the side and twisted her lips. Not the Wentzian sneer saved for magazine covers and paparazzi lenses, but the scrunchy little expression that said, 'I'm thinking, and I'm thinking about whether I believe you or not.'

He sucked his lower lip into a suddenly-dry mouth and met warm whiskey eyes he knew better than his own, even in an unknown context. "Pete Wentz is the longest stable relationship I've ever had."

**

Pete and Patrick stood outside the bank of port-a-potties, facing themselves. Patsy stood a little behind Peep. The night air had hit the dewpoint and everything was hazy with condensing humidity that settled over skin like a blanket.

"You guys better go," Patsy said.

"It's probably way past your old-geezer bedtime." Peep pressed the balled-up sweatshirt into Pete's hands.

Pete stuck his tongue out at her. She responded in kind and Patsy rolled her eyes. "Gross."

Patrick nodded at his teenage self. "You have no idea all the places that tongue has been."

"That'll keep me up nights. Thanks, old-dad-me."

Patrick returned a twin of her smile. "Anytime, teenage-girl-me. So what did he tell you? Spoilers for the next twenty years of TV shows?"

Patsy lowered her head and rocked back on her heels. Battered Converse and a yellow polo shirt and jeans that hadn't seen the inside of a washing machine in too long. "He told me just three things. One, that I should trust myself but believe her." She jerked her head towards Peep. "Two, that she'd always take a bullet for me even if I was the one holding the gun."

Patrick tsked at that. _Giving away the lyrics is not how it works_. "And the third?"

"It was a quote. CS Lewis. 'You can't go back and change the beginning but you can start where you are and change the ending.'"

Patrick blinked at his counterpart. "Was that a message for you or for me?"

Patsy glanced over to where Peep and Pete were comparing tattoos and shook her head. "If it's for me, then it's for you, too. If there's one thing I know about Peep, it's that she tells me everything sooner or later, one way or another. I just have to figure out how to listen."

He knew it was risky, breaking some rule about altering timelines, so he said the next few words very carefully. "Take her calls. Even when you want to wring her neck." Technically, it was vague enough that it applied to a number of points in their history.

Pete tugged on the back of his jacket. "Time to go. For once, _I_ have to pee."

Patsy stepped forward and hugged him. "Thank you. Even if you can't give us spoilers."

Peep was next. She buried her face in Patrick's neck and breathed in. "You smell the same."

"It's the Stumph family sweat gene." His reply was muffled in her hair. "It's always going to be complicated with us. That's what makes it mean so much."

He followed Pete into the port-a-potty. Before the door slammed, Pete leaned out one last time. "Do us a favor? After we're gone, like, put an 'Out-of-Order' sign on this thing."

Peep's grin turned evil. "I bet I can get Dirty to drop fireworks in it."

"Oh God. Do _not_ let Dirty anywhere near this thing for any reason," Patrick yelled.

Pete slammed the door and flipped the lock. Patrick edged out of the way as he heard the shuffle of fabric and the sound of splashing, followed by the barest of ripples across his skin. Hardly noticeable at all.

He flipped the lock back to open and pushed at the door. The spring of the door creaked in a quiet night. Behind him, Pete squished the hand sanitizer dispenser and the soapy-scent hit him as Patrick stepped out, Pete on his heels. "Did we make it back?"

Patrick sniffed. "Smells more like campfire." He sniffed again. "And big lumberjack with gentle hands mountain man. So yeah, we're back."

He started towards the avenue where the Fall Out Buses were parked. Pete trotted to catch up to him. "Trick?"

Patrick slowed. "Yeah?"

"Do you think they'll…I dunno…figure… _stuff_...out. Better than we did?"

Warm golden light spilled out from the front window of their bus. The brazier was mostly ash but a few pellets still glowed orange. The camp chairs had been turned over to keep the dew from settling on them and making them damp in the morning. "Who says we're done figuring… _stuff_ …out?"

Pete leaned up against the side of the bus. Patrick glanced up at him for the first time since they emerged from the port-a-potty of time-travel. His expression was guarded. Careful. Neutral. Patrick didn't like that at all.

_Is it really fair of me to spring this on him?_ "I think they'll be fine. In all the ways that count."

"And us?"

"In all the ways that count." Patrick leaned up against the bus. Closer to Pete than he usually kept himself. Maybe too close, maybe finally just right. "I've always known how much you mean to me. _What_ you mean to me. How much I love you." Pete's brows rose at his last statement. Patrick knew he was waiting for the "man" at the end to diffuse the declaration, but Patrick was done with that. "I've always known _you_. I just…didn't quite know _me_."

Pete leaned in. "What does this mean? For us, I mean. What do you want from me, Patrick?"

Patrick shook his head but touched his forehead to Pete's. "I'm not sure yet. It doesn't have to mean anything--doesn't have to _change_ anything, I mean. Isn't something you have to do anything about--this is all on me. I've got to, I dunno, fit it into my brain." He hated to do this, but if resorting to lyrics was the only way-- "It's a strange way of saying that I know I'm supposed to love you."

Pete's teeth gleamed in the light from the bus window as he pulled open the door and stepped inside. "I'm pretty sure that this isn't when our story ends."

Patrick followed him. "Are we--can we--back bedroom?"

Pete's smile was honest and bright and…relieved. "I've been waiting."

Later, as Pete dug bony shoulders into his chest and Patrick had to shove down a mouthful of hair, Patrick took another deep breath.

"You good?" Pete murmured. At his answered mm-hmm, Pete sighed. "Missed this… _so much_."

"Me too." He was in for some very hard thinking on the rest of this tour. Sorting through past lives, future possibilities, finding the one true thing that crossed universes. "Pete Wentz, you're the longest stable relationship I'll ever have."

**Author's Note:**

> I never expected this thing to get this big, this fast (story of all my fics). Shout out to @earlgreytea68 for pinning down the catchphrase that pins this story together. Another shout-out to @yourtiredheart for the extensive collection of live stuff and for answering timeline questions like "what's the tour where Patrick wore the yellow and brown Clan hoodie?"


End file.
